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SPOTLIGHT: THE OTHER SIDE OF ABU GHRAIB 
THE DETAINEES’ QUEST FOR JUSTICE (PART 1)
BY JOY E. STOCKE, KIM NAGY, AND CHRIS TIEFEL

What happens when two lawyers join forces to prosecute defense contractors, Titan and CACI Corporations, on behalf of the detainees at Abu Ghraib
prison? Meet the faces behind one of the biggest stories of the Iraq conflict. “We had come — my friend Salaam and me — to buy
a car. I was sleeping and they entered my room. It was very dark. I think there were seven soldiers…They turned their helmet lights on, took
us to the living room, tied us up on the ground and put hoods on our heads...”

She smoothed the wrinkles on her forehead, massaging the deep worry lines embedded in her skin. Her husband was right when he sent word to prepare,
to pack their belongings, and leave their home. Independence had been granted to their homeland but they had found themselves on the wrong side of the
line: they were in Pakistan.

I think of Eleanor, on her small lifeboat saying goodbye to her husband and son, perhaps not knowing this was the very last time her eyes would
behold their faces. I think of her life’s greatest tragedy leading to the construction of one of the world’s greatest libraries…

There, moving in clockwise direction was a cavalcade of courtesans: wave after wave of hookers walked along, most of them alone but some
in pairs and sometimes three or four together. Some held hands, others talked on tiny cell phones, and all were working on eye contact.

PEN WORLD VOICES: LANGUAGE WITHIN SILENCE 
A CONVERSATION WITH PER PETTERSON
BY JOY E. STOCKE

The 2006 Independent London Foreign Fiction Prizewinner for Out Stealing Horses, winner of the Nordic
Council’s Literary Prize for To Siberia, The Norwegian Critic’s Prize for Literature, and the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award gives substance to silence,
creating characters who reveal personal history within the larger context of commerce and world politics.

PEN WORLD VOICES: DRAWING ON THE UNIVERSAL IN AFRICA  AN INTERVIEW WITH MARGUERITE ABOUET, AUTHOR OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, ‘AYA’BY ANGELA AJAYI

“I got so annoyed at the way in which the media systematically showed the bad side of the African continent, habitual litanies of wars, famine, of the ‘sida,’ and other disasters, that I wished to show the other side, to tell about daily modern life that also exists in Africa.”

PEN WORLD VOICES INTERVIEW:
MYTH, MAGIC, AND THE MIND OF NEIL GAIMAN
BY TIM E. OGLINE

A conversation with Neil Gaiman, award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of novels, graphic
novels, and children’s books. Gaiman’s feature film, Mirrormask, was just recently released
on DVD from Sony Pictures.

“I think that freedom of speech is purely and simply the most important thing we
have. The freedom to have ideas, the freedom to express those ideas  whether writing fiction or non-fiction.”

I travel to be taught, to some degree, how little I know about the world, how local all my assumptions are, and
how everything I think I know is wrong. I do see a connectedness, deep down, within all of us, at the human level,
across centuries and across continents...

PEN WORLD VOICES INTERVIEW:THE ART OF CONNECTION  A CONVERSATIONWITH ALAIN DE BOTTON BY KIM NAGY

There is a constant impulse to censor and to repress ideas that are uncomfortable. And people do want to lock
others up for their ideas and beat them up and maybe even kill them... That’s why I think an organization
like PEN will always have its work to do.